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conduct, so I shall not go into close detail. Suffice it to say we did not lose her, and my companions were replaced every two or three hours. As for my appearance, it is extraordinary how much a ladies’ handbag may contain in the way of concealment. I felt quite bereft when I transformed at last into a man.
    I even managed a quick meal, my first of the day, while the agency’s two women—one young, one old—kept their eyes on the inexpensive little bistro where Russell was eking out her meagre allowance.
    I joined the older one as she followed my apprentice down the ill-lit street. The wartime ban on street lamps and outdoor lights made it necessary to follow rather more closely than I might have wished, but Russell merely made for the ladies’ club. I heard her voice greeting the door-man; the door closed behind her.
    “Give me five minutes,” I told the agent. “Then you can go home.”
    The empty building across from The Vicissitude (what a name for a club!) was a block of flats in the process of renovation. My pick-locks made fast work of the padlock, and I arranged the chains to appear fastened, should the beat constable give them a glance. Débris-littered stairs led to windows that were not entirely boarded over. I even found a sort of chair in one of the rubbish heaps, its three surviving legs ensuring that, tired as I was, I would not doze off too deeply. I positioned it before the window, and was rewarded with a second piece of luck: The curtains in a room across from me went bright, betraying a gap between them. In that gap my apprentice appeared. She looked down at the motorcars and pedestrians for a moment, then tugged the curtains more completely together. The glow behind them remained on.
    Six minutes later, I heard the door below me scrape open and shut; a minute after, the door behind me did the same.
    “Do you want me to watch the back of the club?” my companion asked.
    “She’s given no indication that she’s aware of us, and that alleyway has no windows overlooking the back door. I think we’ll be safe enough.”
    “There are rooftops. Or I could take up a position amongst the club’s dust-bins. Either way, with the blackout, she won’t see me.”
    Good woman: not only a willing volunteer, but she’d done her home-work. Still, I could see no reason to inflict a miserable night on her: Russell had neither the clothes nor the money—nor even, I would have thought, the inclination—to be planning an evening out. If I knew the child at all, she was over there wallowing in her new books.
    “That won’t be necessary. Just have someone join me here before dawn. A flask of coffee would be appreciated.”
    “Have a good evening,” she said, and left me alone with my thoughts, my pipe, and the curtains across the street.
    I sat down to my balancing act shortly after nine o’clock. The glow across the way did not vary for two hours. At ten minutes past eleven, faint shadows moved behind the curtains; a tall, slim silhouette passed left to right, then back again. A few minutes later, the room went dark.
    I stood, taking care that my three-legged chair did not crash over, and waited at the window for a time. No one emerged from the club door, and I suppressed the inevitable glimmer of doubt—that she had felt her tail, that I should have put someone at the back—to return to the chair.
    I stopped. Some odd sound had penetrated the night. I walked to the adjoining window, where more of the glass was missing, and listened to the bells and bellows of a fire engine. It was not near, and it was moving farther away. However, the noise was repeated as another engine hurried across London. Then another.
    Some series of catastrophes were afoot. And although I knew it was hubris to assume that distant city fires might be in any way my responsibility, nonetheless, I felt an interest greater than mere curiosity. I studied the dark façade of The Vicissitude, knowing that the sound was unlikely to